The Upcoming Adventures thread

EDIT: since nobody's actually voting on the proposal, I'll just turn this into the Upcoming Adventures thread itself.

Planning an adventure? Make a brief post about it here, in as much detail as you want (no need to give away surprises!)

Also it would be great to give an estimate of when it'll start, whether "I'm just starting to think about it" or "It's approved and I'll start as soon as I get enough players" or something in between. That'll let other DM's plan their adventures to not overlap yours, and let the poor players in the Hanged Man know if there'll be anything for them soon.

Original Proposal

We've had a couple of instances now where somebody was waiting for the right moment to post a Call To Adventure, and then somebody else came in and snatched up all the players in the tavern from them. Often it's because some people like to talk about the adventures they're about to run, even before they're approved, and some people like to sit on them and spring them as a surprise.

So let's say Bilbo submits an adventure that's supposed to have a surprising out-of-nowhere opening, and doesn't mention it to anyone in public until it's time to start it. Then Frodo submits an adventure, posts, "Hey, I just submitted an adventure!" and then when it's approved, posts, "Good news, my adventure's been approved, I'll start it as soon as there are enough people in the tavern!"

From Bilbo's point of view, this loudmouth is stealing his thunder - he's been waiting for the perfect moment to spring his surprise, and now everybody's talking about Frodo's adventure, getting a party together for it, and his surprise will just fall flat, even though his was approved first. But if he starts his adventure before Frodo does, then from Frodo's point of view, he's been talking about his adventure, getting everybody excited, and then out of nowhere this jackass posts an adventure that nobody even knew was coming and steals all his players! How was he supposed to know that Bilbo had an adventure waiting?

(The Fire! thread's been on both ends of this.)

So I think we should have a thread or wiki page with a list of upcoming approved adventures. They don't have to include the adventure name or any details, to preserve surprises, just the DM's name and the date they were proposed and accepted. That way anybody who's thinking of running an adventure can check if anyone's waiting already, instead of relying on people to keep track of who's mentioned they might have something coming up.

The thread should also list any other details about scheduling the DM thinks are relevant. (For example, if you have a quick adventure that you want to run whenever there are people sitting around doing nothing, like Fire! or Hoofchew, you should note that so that people can keep putting their adventures before you in the queue.)

We had an informal, "What adventure are you thinking about running?" thread, but it's dropped out of use, and I'd like something more official to post adventures that are definitely going to happen, not just in the
brainstorming phase.

I think this is a great idea. I'd slightly prefer a thread, just so I could subscribe to it, which I can't seem to figure out how to do with wiki pages. I don't know that it needs to be all official, with a proposal and whatnot; someone just make a thread.

Might as well use this one, then. I've got a relatively short adventure awaiting approval (I'll probably submit it again, seeing as how I decided to nerf some of the encounters. Incidentally enough, Skeleton Archers from Open Grave are WICKED strong. I figured I'd try something different with the second encounter and base the archers off skeletons rather than elves. Big mistake. Doubleshot hits for 2d10+something-or-other on two PCs. Without Utility powers, two Skeletal Archers would pretty much cripple a 1st level party) called "Fire and Ice". It's a short little excursion that involves dragons, ninjas, and (go figure) plenty of both fire and ice. So far I've got one person interested, and I'd like to get a full party of five 1st-2nd level PCs.

Personally, I would suggest making a new sticky thread similar to the approved character's thread. Instead of alphabetic sections, you can have three or four adventure sections. One say "Submitted Adventures", one say "Approved Adventures", one say "Active Adventures" and one be for "Completed Adventures". You can put up a date and time stamp on the adventures. This way, everyone knows where each adventure is.

I only suggest this, if people start posting adventures they plan to run and such here, there's nothing to give you an idea of what state the adventures are in.

For example, I am currently in the Turtledome thread playing in the Battle Bone adventure. However, I would be interested in playing in the Fire and Ice adventure because, well...dragons and ninjas. Who wouldn't want to play that? Anyway, when I get done with Battle Bone, it would be nice to know where the adventure stands. I know the "Active" and "Completed" sections aren't necessary, but just add a nice archiving touch.

I guess this thread isn't a full "proposal" needing voting and stuff - but I do think we should discuss the format before making the thread.

The problem with a sticky thread is, only the admins can edit the posts. I guess it could be part of the judges' job to put up the adventures once they're approved, but that's one more thing they have to worry about.

For a wiki page, there's the problem of making sure people read it: the wiki's kind of slow and cumbersome to access. (BTW, there's a list of ongoing and completed adventures at L4W:Adventure Index, but it only includes adventures that have actually started.)

I'm also wondering what to do if somebody proposes an adventure, doesn't get to run it for a while, and loses interest. How do we know everything on the list is still current?

I agree that the judges don't need more to do, but from what I understand...and I don't run any adventures here, so I know I could very easily be wrong...they have to approve the adventures anyway. So, realistically, you need to have a judge put the adventure up on the sticky when he starts reviewing it for approval and move it to approved when the adventure has been approved. The judge who ends up judging the game then can go in and remove it from the "approved" section when they get the chance.

Hopefully, this would only cause 2 more steps for the judges and would give DMs and players an idea of adventures that were coming. And again, the only reason I was saying to make that a sticky would be to make it easy for everyone to locate and view, including newer players.

I think it would be really helpful for new players as well. Having just joined the community this year I remember it being a bit frustrating not knowing whether any adventures were even in the works. I wish there had been something like this that I could look at and go "Ok there are three waiting for approval, and one thats approved and must just be waiting for people"

So yeah, go adventure thread go. And I do think a sticky thread would be the way to go.

I also love the idea. As for how to implement it, there are pros and cons for each idea. A sticky thread might just be the best, with L4W Facilitator as the thread starter - treat it something like this thread, except it'd be easier to upkeep because we have to actually receive and approve adventure submissions. It does make a little more work for the judges, but it's sort of similar to updating the approved characters list.

I'd also like to note that just because a thread is stickied doesn't mean that no one else can post in it. We just ask that you don't post in the three that we have stickied currently because, well, there's really no reason for you to.

Current and past PbP: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4853360-post58.html

I like it also (having been the victim of some unintentional player-snatching), it also lets the PC's have an idea of what's coming up and which type of adventure they'd like to go on. My current addy is an urban-style adventure and perhaps the Primal power-sourced PC's (and rangers) would prefer a wilderness style addy.

Uh-oh! Upcoming PC glut! The first PHB2 character just entered the tavern, Dude Where's My Ring? is going to wrap up in the next few days, and both Captain's Caper (I assume) and Fire! are on their final battles - when those are over it'll put 18 characters back into circulation.

Anybody got anything in the works they haven't mentioned? Don Incognito, you still available to run "Fire and Ice"?

EDIT: I have no less than 3 adventure ideas, but no time to run them in the near future, so meh.